In high performance, military aircraft gas turbine engines, an afterburner or augmenter is disposed downstream of a core engine for providing additional thrust when desired. The augmenter includes an outer casing, a combustion liner and a plurality of circumferentially spaced apart fuel spraybars for injecting additional fuel when desired for augmenting thrust. Since the augmenter receives high velocity core gases from the core engine, flameholders are typically required in the augmenter to provide stable regions downstream of the fuel spraybars for ensuring effective combustion of the injected fuel without blowout.
Although the augmenter environment is substantially hot due to the combustion process when the augmenter is in operation, the flameholders are typically uncooled and therefore have a limited useful life. Cooled flameholders are known in the art for improving useful life of the flameholders. However, the introduction of a cooling fluid in the hot environment of the augmenter necessarily creates substantial differences in temperature between the relatively cold and hot components of the flameholder. Flameholder designs having integral components subject to large differences in temperature from hot to cold are subject to low cycle fatigue therefrom which again limits the useful life of the flameholder assembly.